User blog:VedranTheII/Pretentious Diaries 2: What tricks would you teach your Aura?
Greetings and welcome to Pretentious Diaries, the segment where I take my head canons, open them up with a hammer and chisel and poke it with needles for your viewing pleasure, ending it with me asking you afterwards weather you want me to remove some of them or poke harder and see what else twitches. So what's this about? Today I will...NOT be explaining why I think all Half Grimm are currently impossible within the context of the show… that was originally going to be what this post is about, but after getting yelled at over a typo I didn’t even make (long story), I was forced to do a little more research (by research I mean scene hunting) on this subject…so might as well do this one now… So, what exactly is aura? It’s the writer’s way of dodging the T rating…ok that’s a bit too exact… What is aura in the show? A mana bar that takes hits instead of your life bar…that’s a bit too meta… What is aura to a person of Remnant? A force field…not the answer I wanted…but his partner on the other hand: Aura is the manifestation of our soul — Pyrrha Nikos Thank you P-money. According to the show, human, faunus and animals all have a soul, and as a result, have an aura that can shield them from harm, but wait. There’s more. Every person in the show that has an aura, can also have a semblance. Now a semblance, as stated by that one video most of us haven’t seen: Is a term used to describe the projection of aura into a more tangible form — Not Cortana It gives each individual a “unique” power fueled by their aura, that they can mold and manipulate as they see fit, provided they have enough aura to fuel it. But what else can aura fuel? What techniques can be taught to any two people, even if they have different semblances, aura colors and fighting styles? Is it even possible? The first thing we need to figure out is if it can be used at all outside of a semblance; that video I mentioned earlier goes on a tangent to say that aura is primarily used as a passive defensive mechanism thet we are all familiar with, and that it can be used actively with a semblance, hinting that it cannot be used in an active way any other way…or at least not without dust, so this whole blog post would be rendered moot if I can’t find an active technique that costs aura, does not cost dust, is not tied to a semblance AND looks like something that can be replicated by another character, thankfully a certain cat burglar decided to give me just that. Discount Wind Scar Say hello to what I dubbed Blake’s Aura Slash… V2e11 blake aura slash.png ...but is it one? Well let’s check with the above conditions on a scale of myth to busted. Is it an active use of aura? Yo Roman, what do you think? Roman goes splat.png Confirmed. Is it powered by aura? Well, let’s see, before the actual slash Blakes’s aura flashed. I was a little caught off guard that Blake, with the Black trailer, a semblance that makes shadows and had black particle effects in the second opening…has an aura that isn’t black…but upon further inspection she wouldn’t be the first…I mean sure, we had Ruby the red jewel with a red aura, Yang “sunny side” with a yellow aura, Weiss (German for white) with a white aura. But if you take a look at their next door neighbors we find Jaune, which is yellow in French, with a…not yellow aura…and digging as deep as the first episode reveals that “Fair skin” Goodwitch's aura is not white. V1e6 pyrrha jaune aura.png Glynda Flash.png Is it usable without dust? So going back on track I think this section is pretty much confirmed by the flash, indicating that she was preparing a sizeable portion of her aura for her next attack. This one was originally going to break my theory because in volume 2 Weiss decided to court Blake behind our noses. Before the fight with Roman, Weiss gave her that, so it’s plausible that she only pulled the slash with the use of the dust…so let’s see if Blake has done this technique some other time…AHA, episode 4 of volume 2, Blake did it several times, While being powered by a Glyph used by Weiss…for the love of God princess stop sticking your shipping preferences in my post…please? BlakeAuraSlash.png Thank you. Episode 9 of volume 2 is the best scenario I can have for her to do this. No scene prior that gives her temporary ammo, no magic teammate to give her a buff, and she was fighting mooks. If this technique had an ammo limit such as dust, I highly doubt she would have used it to kill a lowly Beowolf, when even Weiss, the one that is actually loaded with dust, chose not to do so, one scene later. Instead she used it as an alternative to her shadow dash, a technique that purely costs aura, not dust. This is enough for me to declare this criteria as confirmed. 'Is it NOT tied to her semblance?' Considering her semblance is creating copies of herself... Shadow dance.png ...and her outfit leaves little room for a giant banana shaped energy thingamabob, I’m going to have to go with confirmed on this one. 'Does it looks like something that can be used by another character?' Well since all that you seem to need is aura + a slash of a sharp weapon...I’ll say probably…but I really wish I could find another character that did that in an isolated incident like Blake... Screenshot (38).png Thank you old man. So there it is, I went as far as my imagination could take me in order to disprove this technique as not being purely aura powered and failed…God that took a lot of pictures…thankfully the rest of the stuff on this post will be easier to prove…sort of. Discount Force Barrier Let’s take a trip down memory lane back to volume 1, when aura was introduced, and Ren did a force field. Now, someone suggested that this could be his semblance, and that I should stop assuming anyone with aura can do this…except someone else DID do this...twice. Riple effects coming out of the palm of the hand from the point of the attack, color coded for my convenience…to top it off, both also used it offensively to create makeshift projectiles...one did it at point blank range though. So either this is something that can be used by anyone with an aura, or Ren and Cinder have the same semblance, which we have been told CAN be hereditary...hmm... To be fair there have been moments in Volume 2 that reminded me of the 2 techniques mentioned earlier, Weiss's barrier against the lieutenant in No brakes, and Fox’s attack during Breach. But Weiss did that without the palm placement and seem to have set it up earlier, while Fox seemes to have made 2, one from each hand so I’ll leave them out. Outside of that, I guess it is worth noting the conundrum with a whip. Discount Arabic Glyndas semblance is stated to be telekinesis, the ability to move objects without touching them; volume 2 has shown her doing that several times, mostly for cleanup duty, but volume 1 has shown her doing other, more interesting stuff, like summoning a hale storm (If you have to ask where she kept the dust for that, you have a purer heart than I do), but more importantly she did this: Hello magical squiggly lines…what secrets can you share to me. Well for one, this isn’t tied to her semblance…perhaps it can be augmented with her semblance in order to form more complicated patterns, but Cinder is here to lend me a hand, as she used her own squiggly lines…twice. So far these runes have been used to create barriers to protect more than one person, do a selective aoe blasts and…change clothes? Interestin...and exciting. Why is it interesting? Because if Cinders semblance turns out to not be remotely related to those runes, than the show just opened the floodgates for RWBY’s version of spells, that can be taught to any characters that are willing to take the time to learn them and have enough control to classify them as a “mage” archtype, and i love me some mages. But, as some of you have noticed, the 2 runes do not match, while Cinders runes have the same pattern regardless if she changed her wardrobe or walles off an attack; however, people that have been around this thread longer than I have…and wow if that’s not a concept that caught me off guard…have pointed out that the colors of the runes, match the color of different types of Dust. Word of Remnant: Dust, revealed that users may chose to weave dust into their clothes as opposed to carry a weapon. If that is true, is it possible cinder’s outfit has dust threads? If so, than her second use of runes is her rearranging her outfit and turning it from a cat suit to a dress, similar to how she turned the dust she stored into what appeared to be obsidian based weapons. So overall, it seems these runes, that may or may not have a unique pattern for every user, are used in order to perform more complicated dust manipulation…so not exactly purely aura powered, but not semblance powered either…meh, I’ll take what I can get. Conclusion So, without further ado, I hope I have proven, until this show demonstrates otherwise… That Cinder is Rens mother…I mean that Glynda and Cinder are siblings…I mean…I don't know what i mean honestly...I guess what I’m trying to do is prove that my assumption, that aura can be used actively without the need of a semblance, is not baseless. My researches here seems to point out that people, with or without a semblance, are able to gather aura and focus it into certain points in order to better defend from attacks, improve their offense when striking, and give them more range than they would normally have access to. Mage type characters however, are still tied to either a semblance, dust, or both, using runes in order to better and/or selectively manipulate dust, when they don’t have a semblance that does that for them (hello Weiss). They are not a necesity, as Cinder, Glynda AND Weiss have done dust based attacks without the runes, but the runes do seem to be an indicator for high level spells. Obviously all of these are assumptions on my part, and although I was advised, in not the nicest of terms, to stop assuming in general, I have found that assuming can be quite good for my health, for instance if I see someone get run over by a car and die, I can assume I will die under similar circumstances, and as such I will pay attention when I cross the street. Regardless I am not entirely stupid, I am aware baseless assumptions are a cause for many stupid decisions taken by people in the past, and I do not wish to be one of them. Soo…agree? Dissagree? What can you do with aura? What CANT’you do with aura? And the one i'm most curious about... What tricks would you teach your aura? — VedranTheII Category:Blog posts